So, Glen Hansard died last week.
Yes, ONCE was a good movie. Yes, “Falling Slowly” is a good song. But Hansard was at BEST problematic.
His partner in Swell Season (and ONCE) was Marketa Irglova, whom he met when he was 32 and she was THIRTEEN. Their romantic relationship didn’t begin, it’s claimed, until six years later. Some said “ah, well, fair play” at the time, but today, we call that “grooming.”
And now Neko Case has a story to tell as well. You should read it.
In 2006, my friends at Infernal Bridegroom Productions collaborated with Austin musician and outsider artist Daniel Johnston to create a rock opera based on his work. The result, “Speeding Motorcycle,” was a local hit. It traced the arc of Daniel’s “Laurie” material through to a burst of extravagant joy delivered in a new song Daniel wrote for the production (“Lovin’ Feelings”).
This show was one of the finest things I’ve ever seen in my life. It was beautiful and wrenching and touching and true, in all the ways that good theater can be. I saw it many times (board membership has its privileges), and always left feeling emotionally spent but happy.
A high point of the show was a solo piano performance of a song called “Peek a Boo,” which is a stark and occasionally brutal view into Daniel himself and his battles with depression and mental illness. It is deeply personal, but also beautiful and affecting even if you just read the lyrics. My friend Cary literally taught himself enough piano to play it in order to get it into the show, and he absolutely slayed the audience every night with it. You could hear a pin drop during the quiet passages. It was extraordinary.
That show — twenty years ago this summer, I am shocked to note — was extended, and then restaged in Austin with some of the same cast (including Cary) the following year, and then it was gone, like all theater.
In 2019, the successor company Catastrophic restaged it, and while it was glorious to see it live again the glory was bittersweet because our friend Cary died back in 2008. His part (like many others) was recast. The new guy was talented and fine, really, but those of us who had been in the rundown, ramshackle Axiom in 2006 I suspect all had trouble seeing him as something other than “not Cary.” Even so, having “Motorcycle” again was still fucking amazing.
In the 2019 revival, my friend Joe took over “Peek A Boo.” Cary’s raw emotion hit like a hammer in 2006; Joe’s performance coupled with the loss of Cary gave the 2019 version an order of magnitude more weight for those of us who remembered the original. Not that new audience members got away scot free; there were few dry eyes in the house after either performance.
So why talk about this now?
Turns out, one of my new favorite musicians is also not just a fan of Daniel Johnston generally, but of this song in particular, and apparently works a cover into her sets whenever she plays Austin. There are several versions on YouTube, but this is the cleanest. Enjoy now Phoebe Bridgers’ version of “Peek a Boo.”
(Fun fact: Bridgers was only 12 when IBP staged this show.)
There exist no end of bands that have toured, or continue to tour, well past their sell-by dates.
Often, the modern lineup of the bands have only nominal overlap with the version of the group that recorded the hits. The Stones are kinda like this, since only two guys on stage at a Stones show were part of recording the bulk of their setlist — even Ron Wood is a newcomer by that metric.
Sometimes, even, there’s no overlap at all: nobody in Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2026 was in the band before 1987, long after the recording the songs that people pay to see. For all practical purposes, the act touring today is a Skynyrd cover band, and smart money says they’re not even the best one available.
Then there are special cases, which is what prompted me to write this post. Something called “The Mavericks” will play in Durham soon. In my opinion, though, that band requires Raul Malo. Sadly, he passed away in 2025 and took his iconic voice with him.
The remaining lineup is Paul Deakin, who helped found the band in 1989, plus Eddie Perez (with the band for a year in 2003 before returning in 2012) and Jerry McFadden (2012-present). To this they’ve added two “touring member” vocalists (James Otto and Emily West).
To what degree is this just a Mavericks cover band?
I don’t have a diary about it, but I know roughly where I was, and what I was probably doing. I lived in Tuscaloosa, rooming with my pal Brad, but spending a ton of time with the girl I was dating (whom I’d move in with by the following summer).
We didn’t watch a lot of TV, but we made a point of setting the VCR for SNL. Even bad episodes were worth 30 minutes of laughs on Sunday, and you could fast forward through the cringy bits and commercials. I can’t swear where we were exactly on this particular Saturday night, but the odds are it was the Houndstooth, Egan’s, or the Chukker.
I remember watching this the next day, with Brad and Cassie. We were big Northern Exposure fans, so Rob Morrow hosting was the big draw — but Nirvana was already exploding. The album Nevermind had been released the previous September, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a surprise hit, aided in part by heavy rotation on 120 Minutes and, eventually, every possible format of rock radio. Geffen had trouble keeping up with the demand for the album.
So anyway, we watched the show. I don’t remember any of Morrow’s sketches, but I remember this performance. We were stunned by it. And here it is again, 34 years later, thanks to Reddit. Enjoy.
A year ago, I posted this, about the 7-minute trailer for Questlove’s SNL music documentary.
That official link, I have discovered, has rotted — but this link is still live. January sucks this year. Treat yoself.
Four and a half years ago I pointed y’all to this excellent cover of Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box” by piano phenom Robert Glasper. Go ahead and watch again; I’ll wait:
I don’t think this version is available outside the Youtube clip, but around the same time it was recorded (2013), Glasper released an album called Covered that contains another Radiohead track (“Reckoner”, from In Rainbows). Last year, Glasper released Keys to the City Volume One, which contains another very different cover of “Packt” that is probably also worth your time; it’s much more trip-hoppy. Keys is exclusive to AppleMusic / iTunes.
What I did NOT note at the time, though, is that the beatboxer in the clip is Taylor McFerrin. His dad is kind of a big deal.
Look, all you need to know is that it’s Neko Case writing about Sinead O’Connor.
Billy Joel had a hit in 1980 with “You May Be Right,” and shortly thereafter I bought my very first music: a copy of Glass Houses on 8-track.
In the last 45 years, I’ve bought a LOT of other music — a few others on 8-Track, a bunch on cassette, and then starting in 1988, a WHOLE LOT on CD. I didn’t start buying vinyl until about 20 years ago, and since that coincided with DRM-free digital and then all-you-can-eat streaming, vinyl collecting never reached the fever pitch of CD buying.
In all that time, though, the transaction was only ever “music to me, money to record shop.” There’s been attrition and loss, but I never sold anything.
Some of my college pals would occasionally sell one-hit wonder CDs or whatever, either because they didn’t want them cluttering up the collection or (more often) because they needed money. I never did, though. I still own award-worthy CDs like the second Blow Monkeys release, from 1986 (2.5 stars at Allmusic!). Whatever pittance the local shop would’ve given me for it wasn’t sufficient to forever lose the opportunity to hear “Diggin’ Your Scene” again, at least back in those scarcity-driven days.
I say “I never,” but of course the point of this message is that it was only “I never” until about 20 minutes ago, because I accepted $155 from Cactus for the culls from our vinyl collection.
It’s not that I don’t want to have those, and it’s not that we need the money; it’s that I don’t want to pay Mayflower to MOVE them.
Having received our first pack-and-move quotes, we are getting MUCH more aggressive about the pre-move purge.
And so: sic transit gloria mundi, eh?
Fiona Apple has the Whole of the Moon. This may be the finest cover ever. Unseen on the clip, but present on the recording, are Matt Chamberlain, Wendy Malvoin, and Phoebe Bridgers.
Here is Neko Case covering Iron Maiden some years ago at a live show in Minnesota.
A pedal steel is involved, but it in no way reduces its ferocity. Enjoy.
It’s easy to feel like everything is terrible right now, but some things aren’t.
This isn’t. This is the 3 surviving members of Nirvana — Grohl, Novoselic, and Smear — reuniting for Fire Aid LA last night, with a rotating slate of vocalists. St Vincent joins them for “Breed;” early Nirvana patron and music god Kim Gordon steps in for “School.” Icon Joan Jett has the mic for “Territorial Pissings.”
And Dave’s daughter Violet sings on “All Apologies,” backed by her father (and also during which Gordon is back on stage on bass, as Novoselic shifted to accordion).
A fun thing to note here is that when famously-giant Novoselic (listed online at slightly over 2m, or about 6′ 7″) kneels in tribute to Jett at the end of her song, he’s still nearly as tall as she is. (And she’s not especially short, apparently; the Internet says 5’5″.)
You should make time — it’s only about 7 minutes — for this really great tribute edit of SNL musical guests, released as a trailer for Questlove’s 3-hour documentary on the history of music on SNL. It drops tonight; I can’t wait.
In the world I grew up in, live musical performances on TV were more common and mainstream. Now, it feels like SNL is one of the last places where that tradition continues.
FIRST:
Ol’ Man Dorman sent me this clip of a Paul McCartney show in CDMX a couple days ago wherein Jack White and St Vincent join him and his band for the conclusion of THE END. It is delightful.
THEN:
TV on the Radio resurfaced for an absolutely barn-burner of a performance on Jimmy Fallon, heralding both a criminally short tour AND the 20th anniversary reissue of their debut album, which I’m trying to decide if I’m gonna go buy RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
I see in the news that Tito Jackson, 3rd eldest of the Jackson Family and former member of the Jackson 5, has passed away. He was not quite 71.
I think of the Jackson 5 as a long-ago thing, but of course they weren’t, and also of course they were all terribly young in their heyday — they started in 1964; my personal favorite tracks came in 1969-1970 — so I looked it up.
Joe and Katherine Jackson had 10 kids between 1950 and 1966, including a set of twins where only one survived. Jackson 5 members in bold.
See, they used to be called Daddy, and were way more of a prog-rock kind of bent — GODDAMMIT LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING, YOU PREHISTORIC FREAK — until probably around 1973 or so, when they added Bob Siebenberg, among other new members — STOP EATING THE FURNITURE, YOU FUCK — and got signed. In 1974, they had their first hit, which turned out to be one of many — JESUS FUCK YOU STINK, YOU KNOW THAT? — that included 1975’s “Dreamer” and the also-solid B-side “Bloody Well Right.” DO NOT FUCKING BITE THE INTERN! CHRIST! The late 1970s brought their huge hit, “Breakfast in America,” that included the songs anyone who grew up in the 1970s — I’M STARTING TO THINK YOU DON’T REALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SUPERTRAMP, YOU GENETIC THROWBACK — knows by heart, including “The Logical Song,” “Goodbye Stranger,” and “Take the Long Way Home.”
You know what? Fuck this. You and your poison spit can go listen to One Direction for all I care. I’m out.
I present the wrongest Christmas carol ever, safely now in June:
Thousands of tiny white things inside of his drum.
So geriatric oldies act “The Rolling Stones” played here on Sunday. I’ve seen them before, most recently 30 years ago, and candidly it was already a bit hard to swallow 50+ Mick preening about when Clinton was president. At 80, it’s damn near a novelty act — and a gradually sadder and sadder one, given that at this point only Mick and Keith remain of the band that gave us the string of groundbreaking records in the late 60s and early 70s. Wyman has been retired since 1993. Charlie Watts has been dead for two years, which is hard to fathom.
Sure, they have Ron Wood as the “new guy” with half a century behind him, and that’s not NOTHING, but he’s also not on the good material. He joined because Mick Taylor had left, and his exit crippled the band creatively — at least, compared to what they accomplished with him. Taylor was in the band from Let It Bleed (1969) through I’s Only Rock And Roll (1974); that era includes Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St. The Stones songs you know are overwhelmingly from 1974 or earlier, with some exceptions, and a GREAT chunk of their best material happened with Taylor on 2nd guitar.
In keeping with that, of the 18 songs they played Sunday, 11 were from 1974 or earlier. The newer tracks include 2 each from 1978’s Some Girls (“Beast of Burden” and “Miss You”) and 1981’s Tattoo You (concert favorite “Start Me Up” — realistically speaking, their only true hit since 1974 — and “Little T&A”).
The Tattoo You tracks are, at this point, 43 years old; they were also the youngest songs played aside from the obligatory sampling of last year’s Hackney Diamonds. Even with the new tracks in the mix, the average song age Sunday is old enough to schedule a colonoscopy. If you drop the 3 youngsters as outliers, the average age shoots up to 53.
Anyway, he’s a review — and setlist — from the other night, written by my pal Andrew. He’s awesome. It’s a fun read, even allowing for my snark about these octogenarians and their nostalgia tour.
This six-song set at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts is maybe the finest, tightest concert you’ll ever see. And it’s in an office.
To be fair: they brought a horn section.
Rodgers, if you’re somehow unaware, is a GIANT of American music. He wrote, co-wrote, or produced SO MUCH music you know by heart even if you were never specifically a Chic fan (about which: you should be). Wikipedia kinda sums up his impact: “The co-founder of Chic, he has written, produced, and performed on records that have sold more than 500 million albums and 75 million singles worldwide.”
The set:
Oh, and there’s a surprise appearance by a little ditty written by Rodgers for a beloved late 80s film somewhere in the middle. :)
Make time. You won’t be sorry. Play it loud.
Anthrax and Chuck D bring the noise, again, and have Lost No Steps. This performance is part of the 40th anniversary for Anthrax, in case you weren’t feeling old enough yet.
(The original collaboration, from 1991, is here. Watching it now, I realize you can date a given Anthrax performance by the length of Scott’s goatee — kinda like the width of Johnny’s lapels in old Tonight Show reruns.)
This is being passed around quite a bit right now, and it’s true: “Mickey” artist and longtime choreographer Toni Basil was born on this day in 1943. And yes, it’s alarming to find out the artist of a song of your youth is an octogenarian, but! there’s more here.
“Mickey” was a hit in 1982. This means that the simple, almost throwback song was released when Basil was already almost 40, and nowhere near the young ingenue she appeared to be in the video. I mean, well done to Ms Basil, but it’s a thing, and it means she was nearly a generation older than we assumed she was when she became quote-unquote famous.
Turns out, though, that she was almost 20 years deep in a fairly accomplished entertainment career when became a one-hit wonder (lol). Like, per Wikipedia, she was a lead dancer in the 1964 film “Pajama Party,” and appeared in the Elvis-vehicle “Viva Las Vegas” that same year. By the mid-60s she was in demand as a choreographer, and released her first single in 1966.
If you review the top hits of 1982, another female artist near the top is Joan Jett, who was only 24 in 1982. Billy Idol is only 3 years older than Jett. That’s more what we expect of pop artists, and that’s why we all blithely assumed she was in their cohort, and that’s what sets us up for this “holy shit Toni Basil is 80” moment.
Instead of being shocked at her age, though, be impressed by her resume — a resume already pretty impressive BEFORE her “one hit wonder” 41 years ago.
The most hilarious thing about the new video from octogenarian nostalgia outfit The Rolling Stones is how it is comprised almost exclusively of historical footage of the band — interposed with a lovely blonde doing a Tawny Kitaen impression in a convertible — presumably because images of three Skeletors tested poorly with focus groups.
I did not make this. I am sorry I wasn’t the one to think of it.
This morning, over my coffee, I was reading some articles I’d put off. I’m a fan of SNL, and my friend Theres maintains a TV blog with her own recaps and discussions of various shows, including SNL.
I read through her post on the Travis Kelce episode from a few weeks ago (and she’s right; he was way funnier than you’d expect), but was kinda stunned to discover that the “posed dead body at the funeral” skit was taken from something that is currently being done in New Orleans. See here.
The “wild thread” part of this comes deep in the linked NYT article:
Ms. Burbank’s service was the second of its kind that Mr. Charbonnet had arranged, and the third in New Orleans in two years. But there have been others elsewhere, most notably in San Juan, P.R. Viewings there in recent years have included a paramedic displayed behind the wheel of his ambulance and, in 2011, a man dressed for his wake like Che Guevara, cigar in hand and seated Indian style.
“I never said it was the first,” said Mr. Charbonnet, who mentioned the 1984 funeral of Willie Stokes Jr., a Chicago gambler known as the Wimp, who sat through his funeral services behind the wheel of a coffin made to look like a Cadillac Seville.
WAT.
I know that name. I know it because Stevie Ray Vaughan had success with a song about Willie the Wimp back in the 80s, and until this morning I was sure it was just a Blues Tall Tale. I mean, who has a “Cadillac coffin?”
Apparently, Willie did.
This is, absolutely and without a doubt, the Bjorkiest Bjork has EVER Bjorked.
R.E.M.’s Murmur was released forty years ago yesterday, on 12 April 1983.
Even though I wouldn’t find them for another couple years, it’s from this root that all the great music of my youth grows. These songs remain like cool, cool water to me. For the best part of 40 years, a copy of Murmur has never been far away. For more than 20, it’s literally ALWAYS been on my music player of choice.
Somehow, back in 2021, I completely missed the release of The Metallica Blacklist, a multi-artist tribute to the elder statesmen’s 1991 album.
What’s weird about this set, though, is how they settled the “who gets to do which song” debate that I assume underpins every such tribute record. This time, the remit was “hey, fuck it, just do whichever song you want.” This led to (a) a huge collection; it has 53 tracks spread across 4 discs (I mean, if you buy it)… but all 53 of those tracks are versions of the twelve songs from The Black Album.
There are six versions of “Enter Sandman,” for example (including one from Ghost) and a full dozen of “Nothing Else Matters” — including contributions from Phoebe Bridgers, Dave Gahan, My Morning Jacket, Darius Rucker, Chris Stapleton, and a weird all-star recording from Miley Cyrus collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Elton John, Chad Smith, and Robert Trujillo. I mean: dang.
The upshot is that this is probably not something you’d sit and listen to at once — I mean, I like this kind of stuff, but even I don’t want to listen to twelve covers of the same song back to back. At the same time, the lack of scarcity brought on by a streaming-first world (again, 53 tracks, so a pre-streaming physical version would’ve doubtless been prohibitively expensive for most folks) means there’s space here for some wildly different, very experimental versions of these songs.
That’s cool.
Anyway. Carry on.
Stop Making Sense is coming back to theaters this year with a 4K remaster.
James Austin Johnson — new guy on SNL — showed up on Fallon, and did a 4 different impressions of Dylan that are completely spot on:
(The fun bit starts at 6 minutes.)
Take a moment today to remember Bowie, who would have turned 75 years old today. In retrospect, his passing two days after his 69th birthday in 2016 was the point at which everything turned to shit. Next came Prince, and after that, well, Trump and COVID.
There’s lots of ways to remember him. If you have to pick one, you can do a lot worse than “Heroes.”
Another great option is his final album, Blackstar, released on his birthday the year he died. At the time, I thought it was easily among his strongest albums, and the six intervening years have done nothing to change my mind. Listening to it now, understanding that he knew he was dying as he wrote those words, gives it a weight beyond the text.
This is long, but make time: Jason Isbell is Tired of Country’s Love Affair With White Nostalgia.
An unexpectedly sad aspect to the common activity of “whoa! I haven’t thought of $song in years… whatever happened to that band?” is, well, discovering someone who lived in your stereo at some point died a while back.
The first time I remember this happening was a year or so ago, when I randomly heard “How Bizarre” on the radio, and it stayed on my mind enough to Google OMC once I got home. I discovered that Pauly Fuemana, the frontman and singer from OMC, had died in 2010 of a degenerative nerve disease.
I was reminded of this after falling down the Google hole while listening to “Fade Into You” thanks to a BoingBoing post. The song was everywhere in the mid-90s, and honestly it’s never really gone away. Lots of folks probably think of Mazzy Star as a one-hit band, but they had much broader success — just nothing at the scale of “Fade” (but few songs are).
It remains beautiful and ethereal, thanks in part to Hope Sandoval‘s lyrics and delivery, but we ought not overlook her songwriting partner David Roback; all of Mazzy’s output is credited to her for lyrics and him for composition. Roback and Sandoval were the creative center of the band (which, we should note, released three albums AFTER So Tonight That I May See).
So here we are at the point of the post: David Roback — whose career included two other critically-acclaimed LA bands — died last February of metastatic cancer. BrooklynVegan has a roundup of musician responses, which will give you an idea of his influence and reach beyond Mazzy Star. He was 61.
Phish concert spreads COVID across the entire country.
Over Halloween weekend, the Vermont jam band Phish played a series of concerts in Las Vegas. Several days later, one attendee posted to Facebook that he had tested positive for COVID-19 — and more than 500 replied, most saying that they or someone they knew had also tested positive after attending the concert.
I’ve always thought that Phish a contagion, but this is not how I expected that to manifest.
By Johnny Marr, with no creaking aging dimwit fascists at all.
I will not be taking questions at this time.
An album recorded after Glastonbury in 2000 will be released in January, and what would have been his 75th birthday.
BoingBoing has the story, and the first single.
I have joked, frequently and darkly, that the world has gone to absolute shit since Bowie died in just before his birthday in 2016. Maybe this album will put things right again. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Thinking about Watts, and I realize that in 5 years, most of these will be gone. I mean, let’s be honest: At threescore and ten, you’re in the zone of statistical danger.
We think of these as 70s bands, not 60s bands, and yet they’re not much younger:
The surviving members of Zeppelin are getting up there, too. Jimmy Page is a contemporary of the folks above, born in January of 1944. Plant was famously younger — too young to enter some of the venues Zep played early on — but he turned 73 last week. John Paul Jones is only a year younger, so 75.
70s stalwarts Aerosmith are in statistical danger, too: Steven Tyler is 73; Joe Perry turns 71 next month.
Pink Floyd are actually older as well:
Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones for 58 years — and, not for nothing, Shirley’s husband for 57 — has died at the age of 80. Initially a jazz player, he was coaxed into what would become the Stones by Mike, Keith, and Brian, and stayed there holding down a stalwart rhythm section for the rest of his life. Mick, Keith, and Charlie are the only members present on every studio record, from 1964’s England’s Newest Hit Makers through to Blue & Lonesome in 2016.
The Rolling Stones have been a novelty / nostalgia act now for a long, long time; my guess is that in the utter SEA of excellent music now available to folks who enjoy this sort of thing, it’s absurdly easy to overlook boomer-era bands entirely, and a young person just getting to know the musical world wouldn’t be insane to have done so. Their glory years are long, long behind them — their last relevant studio record was (arguably) 40 years ago (Tattoo You, which gave us “Start Me Up” and “Waiting On A Friend”), but they’ve kept touring. Their “No Filter” world tour was interrupted by Corona, but was set to resume next month in St. Louis. Ominously in retrospect, earlier this month they announced that longtime associate Steve Jordan would be handling the drums for this leg as Charlie underwent an unspecified medical procedure. (The buried lede here, of course, is that he was still playing live at 79; the last pre-COVID show was 2 years ago this month in Miami).
Their footprint is enormous and inescapable, and I’d argue more interesting and long-lasting than either of the other two “great” 60s bands (the Beatles and the Beach Boys). It’s hard to say what will happen now; obviously they continued after Bill Wyman retired almost a quarter century ago, but this is different. Mick is 78. Keith is a year younger. Nobody would blame them if they packed it in after these shows.
(Oh, and the headline is from here, in case you didn’t already know.)
I was in Birmingham, on a school night — well, a college night; it was a Thursday, and nobody took early classes on a Friday — to see Robert Plant on his Manic Nirvana tour. Someone we’d never heard of was opening.
Those someones blew us all the fuck away, because they were the then-completely-unknown Black Croweshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Crowes). That first album hit huge shortly thereafter — I can’t imagine we were the only cadre of folks who bought it the day after seeing them, and then kept playing it for YEARS.
Well, comes now the news that they’re touring again, finally. They’d announced a reunion tour, playing the first album in its entirety plus others, before COVID, but then, well, COVID. Given the mercurial relationship between the band’s central siblings, it was anybody’s guess if the tour would ever happen.
It’s happening. It started happening Tuesday night, in Nashville. I caught news of it just now in the car; Sirius had credible audio of the opening number (“Twice as Hard”) which still boils with swagger and slide and an astonishingly undiminished-by-time voice from Chris Robinson. Rolling Stone has video, but the audio isn’t great there.
The tour hits Houston — well, the Woodlands — on August 14. I’ve said for years I had no interest in driving back up there for a show, but on this one, well, BITCH I MIGHT.
On Saturday, I was finishing a small group ride when we passed a “boomer bar” up in the Heights that’s usually blaring Freedom Rock or whatever. This time, it was a cover of Changes, which prompted me to say to the person next to you that “you know what? There’s just never any reason to cover David Bowie. It’s perfect already. You will not add goodness to the universe by trying.” They laughed, and we rolled on.
This morning, I am forced to confront one of those situations where an exception basically proves the rule.
Turns out, if you’re Trent Reznor, it’s okay.
It’s June 1, 1978. You and your mates in your high school band get to play on TV — national TV!
Bono here is freshly 18, as is Adam Clayton (who was born on my birthday 10 years prior). But Edge and Larry haven’t had their 1978 birthdays yet, and are just 16.
They’re all 60 now, or nearly so. They’re still in a band.
Here’s Robert Glasper doing Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box”:
(bonus fact: Glasper is from Houston and went to HSPVA.)
Levan Polkka:
Lord knows I’m mostly out of patience for boomer-era culture, but there’s absolutely nothing deniable about the Stones in their heyday.
This is the first performance of “Sympathy for the Devil,” from 1968 concert film “The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus,” so they’re basically at their peak. It’s also the last performance (apparently) with Brian Jones, who’d be ejected from the band — and planet Earth — within a year.
Watch for John Lennon dancing at about 5 minutes. ;)
And it’s all Billie Eilish’s fault.
My friend Andrew penned the Chronicle coverage:
Billy Joe Shaver — a honky-tonk hero so original he coined the phrase “honky-tonk hero” — has died of a stroke. He was 81.
Shaver was without question one of the greatest songwriters Texas produced, which made him among the best in the larger field of music. He mined his life for songs about drifting and dabbling, all manner of ill-advised behaviors that seemed certain to put him in the grave before age 81. “The devil made me do it the first time,” he sang in “Black Rose,” a song about visiting a brothel. “Second time I done it on my own.”
His lyrical sensibility had a natural quality that defied all training and logic. He wrote like he spoke, and it nevertheless came out as poetry. That style endeared him to some of the biggest country music stars of the 1970s. While Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson were the face of what became known as Outlaw country in the 1970s, Shaver didn’t enjoy the same spoils of success as those two men. There was no golfing to fill Billy Joe Shaver’s time.
Whether at a gig or between shows, he ambled around in the same denim shirt and jeans — songwriter Todd Snider called him “the Man in Blue” — hair wild and squinting eyes gleaming with notions of pending trouble. He endured the death of his wife and his son, a heart attack and a quadruple bypass and a broken back. He was acquitted for shooting a man in the face.
A few years back, I was talking with some friends over drinks about whether or not my then-20+ year tenure in Texas has naturalized me to “true Texan” status. The natives were unsure about it — until I told them this:
I’ve shaken Billy Joe Shaver’s hand in Gruene Hall.
I’ll hang my hat on that. Godspeed, Billy Joe.
American Songwriter has this great feature up covering their favorite 8 songs from his first ten years — which is to say, before the personal and artistic collaboration with Brennan.
Well worth your time.
